Ok guys,
I started this one, and it's been interesting reading your opinions.
Seems like most (but not all) of the US subscribers to this reflector
have decided never to send cut figures during a contest exchange that
consists of numbers.
That's fine with me. Carry on sending your 9's and zeros in longhand.
I would still bet a pound that some of you USA guys send 57N for a report
when you actually mean 579.
Cut figures are nothing new of course, it's not a ground breaking
development.
They were reported as being used during WW 1 at sea. And I would bet they
first made their appearance shortly after Morse code itself came into being.
In a contest, certainly on the higher bands, when signals are strong and
readability is Q5 I don't have a problem RXing them. I feel sorry that some
of
you cannot make the translation that N=9, T=0. A=1.
It may be true that cut figures, or abbreviated numbers, call them what
you like, are more familiar to European ops, and especially to signals guys.
I qualify on both counts on that one, sorry!
Interestingly US coastguards actually encouraged the use of cut figures when
receiving wx traffic which was 5 fig groups. 512 KHz was sent as EAU.
My opinion is, use them if your comfortable. And if the guy at the other end
is
not so smart, or is struggling with QRM, then the gamble of cutting the
figures by the DX station was lost for that QSO and a repeat will be
required.
Nothing ventured, nothing gained.
All I suggested was an option in Writelog to set the cw serial # exchange to
send
short 9, short zeros if you so desired. Whether you wanted to use such an
option
would be your choice, but I think it would be a nice feature for some of us
Europeans or
ex-sigs ops.
73
Dez - ZC4DW, 5B4AGW, ZD8DEZ, G0DEZ
--
WWW: http://www.writelog.com/
Submissions: writelog@contesting.com
Administrative requests: writelog-REQUEST@contesting.com
Problems: owner-writelog@contesting.com
|